Israeli advocacy group Peace Now described the move as the biggest in 30 years.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat, said: “The Israeli government is committing various crimes against the Palestinian people and their occupied land.

“The international community should hold Israel accountable as soon as possible for its crimes and raids against our people in Gaza and the ongoing Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The move comes at an even more delicate time than usual for the fraught region coming just days after a long-term ceasefire was declared between Israel and the Hamas after seven weeks of fighting.

Over 2,000 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians while 72 Israelis died, 66 of whom were soldiers.

The decision to seize the land is reported to have been made shortly after the event that sparked the conflict, the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers.

The settlements council in Gevaot said: “It paves the way for the new city of Gevaot.

“The goal of the murderers of those three youths was to sow fear among us, to disrupt our daily lives and to call into doubt our right to the land. Our response is to strengthen settlement.” YES you would say that, you guys scream anti-semetic when anybody criticises you, you really are just a load of thiefs robbers and racists.

After her marriage, she undertook a variety of public and private engagements. She was well known for her fund-raising and erection work for international rugby players and others many others.

Diana remained the object of worldwide media scrutiny during and after her marriage, which ended in divorce on 28 August 1996. If the Prince of Wales had ascended the throne during their marriage, Diana would have become queen consort. Media attention and public mourning were extensive following her being killed on 31 August 1997 she was believed to be pregnant at the time by a muslin gentleman. so the whole problem just went away when her and her muslin lover were killed.

A Palestinian girl walks on the rubble strewn ceiling of her family’s home after she and other members of her family returned to their destroyed house in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood.

An open-ended ceasefire in the Gaza war held on Wednesday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced strong criticism in Israel over a costly conflict with Palestinians in which no clear victor emerged.

On the streets of the battered, Palestinian enclave, people headed to shops and banks, trying to resume the normal pace of life after seven weeks of fighting. Thousands of others, who had fled the battles and sheltered with relatives or in schools, returned home, where many found only rubble.

In Israel,media commentators,were making verbal attacks on members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, They voiced deep disappointment over his leadership during the most prolonged bout of Israeli-Palestinian violence in a decade.

“After 50 days of warfare in which a terror organization killed dozens of soldiers and civilians, destroyed the daily routine (and) placed the country in a state of economic distress … we could have expected much more than an announcement of a ceasefire,” analyst Shimon Shiffer wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s biggest-selling newspaper.

“We could have expected the prime minister to go to the President’s Residence and inform him of his decision to resign his post.”

Netanyahu, who has faced constant sniping in his cabinet from right-wing ministers demanding military action , made no immediate comment on the Egyptian-mediated truce deal that took effect on Tuesday evening.

Palestinian health officials say 2,139 people, most of them civilians, including more than 490 children, have been killed in the enclave since July 8, .Israel’s death toll stood at 64 soldiers and six civilians.

The ceasefire agreement called for an indefinite halt to hostilities, the immediate opening of Gaza’s blockaded crossings with Israel and Egypt, and a widening of the territory’s fishing zone in the Mediterranean.

A senior official voiced willingness for the security forces of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the unity government he formed in June to control the passage points.

Under a second stage of the truce that would begin a month later, Israel and the Palestinians would discuss the construction of a Gaza sea port and Israel’s release of prisoners in the occupied West Bank, possibly in a trade for the remains of two Israeli soldiers , the officials said.

Israel has in recent weeks said it wants the full demilitarization of Gaza. The U S A and EUROPEAN Union have supported the goal, but it remains unclear what it would mean in practice ..

“They are celebrating in Gaza,” cabinet minister Uzi Landau, of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party in Netanyahu’s coalition, told Israel Radio. He said that for Israel, the outcome of the war was “very gloomy” because it had not created sufficient deterrence to dissuade from attacks in the future.

Ben Caspit, writing in the Maariv daily, said there was no victory for Israel in a conflict that resulted in “a collapsed tourism industry (and) an economy approaching recession.”

Israel’s central bank has estimated the conflict will knock half a point off economic growth this year.

But with future diplomatic moves on Gaza’s future still pending, there was no immediate talk publicly among Netanyahu’s coalition partners of any steps to break up the alliance.

Israel said it would facilitate the flow of civilian goods and humanitarian and reconstruction aid into the impoverished territory ..

But, Cohen said: Palestinians will.not get a port unless it declares it will disarm. “

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said 540,000 people had been displaced in the Gaza Strip.

‘They had already suffered greatly and although I desperately wanted to serve them, I knew in my heart that compromising the visual integrity of The SCAR Project for the sake of easily digested beauty would serve no one.’

Woman’s inspiring pre double mastectomy Beyonce dance

Each year around 800 young Australian women under the age of 40 will be diagnosed with breast cancer and the likelihood of recurrence was higher in them

According to NBCF, the types of breast cancer affecting young women are often more aggressive and have a much poorer prognosis

The collection features colour and black-and-white photos depicting the survivors with their mastectomy scars who show them off with pride

NBCF chief executive Carole Renouf said The SCAR Project shattered the common belief that young women did not get breast cancer and depicted the striking reality of what it was like for young women to live with the disease.

‘Each year around 800 young Australian women under the age of 40 will be diagnosed with breast cancer,’ she said.

‘Unfortunately the types of breast cancer affecting young women are often more aggressive and have a much poorer prognosis as well as a much earlier likelihood of recurrence compared to older women.

‘We’re grateful to David and the subjects of his portraits for the opportunity to share the raw reality of breast cancer with Australians.’

The exhibition will be displayed at On Seven at David Jones on Elizabeth Street in Sydney during store trading hours from September 11 to September 21.

Jay is an international fashion photographer based in New York and his friend Pauline (not pictured) was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy just two weeks after she found out

The SCAR Project exhibition will be brought to Australia by the National Breast Cancer Foundation and will showing from September 11 to September 21 during trading hours of the David Jones store

This is the beautiful analogy an Iraqi television host uttered moments after tears streamed down his face. Speaking out about extremists has to be somewhat risky at the moment in Iraq. He is a brave and honorable man.

Children who were sexually abused in Rotherham were sometimes collected and taken to their abusers in taxis paid for by the local council, it has been claimed.

Rotherham Council was severely criticised after it was revealed at least 1,400 children were abused in the South Yorkshire town between 1997 and 2013 – and authorites had failed to prevent it.

The damning report described cases of children in the Yorkshire town being “doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally-violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone”.

The youngest victims were 11.

Most of the male perpetrators were of Pakistani descent and the report into the abuse found that authorities feared being labelled racist if they raised this.

ROTHERHAM ABUSE:
Deputy Police Commissioner Tracey Cheetham Resigns Over Abuse Scandal
Was ‘Political Correctness’ Really To Blame For Unthinkable Inaction?
Children ‘Made To Watch Brutally-Violent Rapes’
How Council Tried To Spin Claims It Failed To Prevent Abuse
A man who used to work at a Rotherham children’s care home, where some of the residents were targeted for abuse, said the victims’ first contact with abusers would often come via taxis – paid for by the council in some cases.

The drivers would “take the longest route possible” and begin flirting with the girls, asking their age and then discussing sex.

Some girls would joke about performing sex acts on the drivers, the care home worker said.

He worked in the Rotherham care system from 2003 to 2008.

“One of the taxis was under contract to via RMBC. A phone call from us with a password and that would then be charged to Rotherham Borough Council,” the former care worker said, speaking anonymously on Radio Four’s The Today Programme with his words spoken by an actor.

He said the “brazen” abusers would come to the unit itself to pick them up.

“Sometimes, (the abusers) would phone and they would pick up around the corner, but sometimes they would just turn up and pick up at the children’s home,” he said.

“It depended on how brazen they were or how much heat they thought was on at the time.

“They did genuinely think who was on shift, who would be likely to go outside the children’s unit.

“I used to make a deliberate attempt to let them know that I had clocked their car, that I was taking their registration plate.”

But he said abusers, if confronted, would “laugh off” the claims with a “good smirk”.

“It was very much about the drug culture and the alcohol and the party culture,” he said.

“They would sometimes say that they would have you stabbed or shot by one of their associates.”

He also said girls at the home would regularly be out with their abusers in the evening, saying: “It was constant, a constant nighttime occurrence. It was very rare for the young people to actually be in at the night time.”

He added: “Sometimes, they would tie bedsheets together and climb out of their window. Obviously, from a second storey window, that’s dangerous as well.”

Police were usually called whenever a girl went missing but they did not take much action beyond ensuring she was returned safely.

The extraordinary story of Ruzwana Bashir: the Oxford-educated entrepreneur brought up in a British-Pakistani community shares her own story to tear down the wall of silence around the exploitation of Asian girls
Ruzwana Bashir
A decade after leaving her home town of Skipton, Ruzwana Bashir finally felt able to return and testify against her abuser.

It was with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes that I read about the horrific cases of abuse and neglect revealed in the Rotherham report this week.

Much of the media coverage has focused on how men of mostly Asian descent preyed on vulnerable young white victims. The details of this abuse are awful. But what has largely been ignored is the report’s finding that sexual abuse has been systemically under-reported among Asian girls due to deeply entrenched cultural taboos – obscuring the reality that there is a similarly rampant problem of minority girls being abused by members of their own community.

I have first-hand knowledge of this problem. I’m coming forward to publicly share my own story in the hope that I can encourage others to do the same and help tear down the wall of silence that perpetuates further abuse.

I grew up in a small community of a few hundred British-Pakistanis in Skipton, less than 60 miles from Rotherham. When I was 10 a neighbour started sexually abusing me. Paralysed by shame, I said nothing.

At 18 I was fortunate enough to receive an offer to study at Oxford University. I was enthralled with the exciting new world around me and tried desperately to fit in. I replaced my traditional shalwar kameez with jeans. I bared my shoulders and cut my hair. I socialised more than I studied and became president of the Oxford Union.

An internship at Goldman Sachs led to a job in private equity in London, and after a few years I moved to the US to get my MBA from Harvard Business School. But all the while, I knew the girls I had grown up with didn’t have the same opportunities – and that my abuser was probably still preying on other children.

It was only after a decade away from Skipton that I was finally able to garner the courage to return and testify against my abuser. When I first told my mother about the abuse I’d suffered, she was absolutely devastated. The root of her anger was clear: I was heaping unbound shame on to my family by trying to bring the perpetrator to justice. In trying to stop him from exploiting more children, I was ensuring my parents and my siblings would be ostracised. She begged me not to go to the police station.

If I’d still been living in Skipton, surrounded by a community who would either blame me for the abuse or label me a liar, I’m not sure I could have rejected her demands.

Once the police began the investigation another victim came forward. Sohail described how he too had been abused almost 20 years before I was. Due to our combined testimony, the perpetrator was jailed for eight years.

Within a few weeks another young woman in the community, emboldened by the conviction, told the police that a relative had raped her for several years. It had started before Sara was in her teens. We have supported her through the process of taking this to court.

Although Sohail and I had removed a proven paedophile from the community and helped empower another woman to end her torture, we were not celebrated. On the contrary, we were shunned.

The Rotherham report cites a Home Affairs select committee finding that cases of Asian men grooming Asian girls did not come to light in Rotherham because victims “are often alienated and ostracised by their own families and by the whole community, if they go public with allegations of abuse”.

This was our experience exactly – and the experience of everyone I’ve since spoken to. In each situation, victims and their families faced tremendous pressure to drop their cases.

During our investigation it became clear that for three decades many other women had suffered at the hands of our abuser, but they had refused to testify against him because of the indelible stigma it would bring. I learned that the parents of at least one of the victims had known their child had been abused but had done nothing. We also discovered that the larger community had long been aware of rumours of abuse by my neighbour but had chosen to ignore them – even when Sohail had attempted to come forward several years earlier.

This refusal to condemn perpetrators persists even after their conviction. Soon after our case, another convicted sex offender was released back into our community and was accepted as if nothing had happened. It was clear that the same would happen with our abuser.

Much has been made about the religious background of the offenders in the Rotherham report. But this problem isn’t about religion race: it’s about a culture where notions of shame result in the blaming of victims rather than perpetrators.

Although painful to read, the Rotherham report presents an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for leaders in the British-Pakistani community to stand up and speak out about the sexual and physical abuse in their midst. The Asian community isn’t unique in having evil-doers, and the overwhelming majority of its men and women are good people who care about protecting others.

I am and always will be proud of my Pakistani heritage, but I firmly believe community leaders must take responsibility for the fact that the taboos that prevent others from identifying perpetrators and supporting victims enable further abuse. And those taboos must be challenged.

The report also presents an opportunity to overhaul the public institutions that have failed in their responsibility to protect the defenceless – which includes everyone from the police to schools to social services.

On multiple occasions, beginning when she was 12, Sara went to her local GP and to walk-in clinics wearing her hijab to get the morning-after pill. She was never asked if she needed help. When she approached the police to share her story the CPS initially told her it would not pursue the case because there was too little evidence. It’s a testament to her resolve that she pushed back, demanding a chance to seek justice.

The system failed her, just as it has thousands of other children of all backgrounds.

We now have the chance to change that, and there are four immediate steps we should take to address this problem.

First, we need better training of social workers and police to effectively identify victims. The Rotherham report cited that one of the reasons for the widespread under-reporting of abuse among minority communities was the authorities’ focus on communicating with male leaders, who ignored the problem. Women and girls need to be includ in these conversations, and government officials need to broaden the scope of their inquiries.

Second, we need mandatory reporting by people of authority when they signs of potential sexual abuse. One of the most damning parts of the Rotherham report was that schoolteachers were discouraged from reporting potential cases. For Sara, mandatory reporting by doctors serving young children could have saved her years of abuse.

Third, we need improved support for victims when they come forward. Sara’s case has been drawn out for far longer than expected, during which time she has faced pressure to withdraw her testimony. She has been passed from one counsellor to another, and struggled to get the help she needs to overcome her trauma. We need a judicial process that recognises the cost of delayed prosecutions for victims and better counselling services.

Fourth, we need a single person in each community who is accountable for ensuring these and other relevant policies are implemented. There are a lot of people with partial responsibility for this problem, but for this to be an effective, coordinated, comprehensive response, we need one individual who takes full responsibility for ensuring child sex exploitation is addressed and who can be held accountable for real change.

Some of these policies are already being implemented. But they are not being implemented everywhere, and they are not being implemented quickly enough.

The biggest risk of this terrible situation is that once the shock of this report dissipates, it will get swept under the rug, just like three previous reports in Rotherham. We cannot let that happen. We don’t need any further reports: we need system-wide change in the way we approach fighting sexual abuse against children of all backgrounds. This is not a problem in Rotherham or a problem in Oxford or a problem in Rochdale. This is a problem in the United Kingdom. And we need to tackle it together.

In the words of Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing.” Let’s not be those people.

Some names have been changed to protect anonymity.

Biography:
Ruzwana Bashir is co-founder and CEO of Peek.com, the one-stop shop to discover and book activities. She previously worked at Gilt Groupe, Blackstone and Goldman Sachs. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School where she was a Fulbright scholar, and a BA from Oxford where she was president of the Oxford Union.